In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about
half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that
coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by
six o'clock that day--the ebb tide--and it was on the first of that tide
that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can
tell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods
allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now,
as I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a
thick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the
bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog,
and from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over
the iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I
was moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me
that he thought the fog would lift; and so I waited, seeking no more
sleep, but sitting up there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in
a bugle call which the French call "La Diane," and which they play to
wake the soldiers. But in summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is
waking long before.
Towards six the mist blew clean away before a little air from the
north-east; it had come sharp over those miles and miles of sand dunes
and flats which stretched away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. From
Gris-nez all the way to the Sound there is no other hill; but coarse
grass, wind-swept and flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set
sail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down the peak of the
mainsail that she might sail slowly, and crept along close to the
eastern pier, for fear that when I got to the open work the westerly
tide should drive me against the western pier; but there was no need for
all this caution, since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet was I
wise to beware, for if you give the strange gods of the sea one little
chance they will take a hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And
sailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual game of skill
against them, the heartiest and most hazardous game in the world.
So then, when I had got well outside, I found what is called "a lump."
The sea was jumbling up and down irregularly, as though great animals
had just stopped fighting there. But whatever was the cause of it, this
lump made it difficult to manage the boat I was in, for the air was
still light and somewhat unsteady; sometimes within a point of north,
and then again dropping and rising free within a point of east: on the
whole, north-east. To windward the sea was very clear, but down towards
the land there was a haze, and when I got to the black buoy which is
three miles from Calais, and marks the place where you should turn to go
into the harbour, I could barely see the high land glooming through the
weather, and Calais belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at all.
I looked at my watch and saw it was seven, and immediately afterwards
the wind became steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and work began.
She would point very nearly north, and so I laid her for that course,
though that would have taken me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew
that the tide was making westerly down the Channel, ebbing away faster
and faster, and that, like a man crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat,
I had to point up far above where I wanted to land, which was at Dover,
the nearest harbour. I sailed her, therefore, I say, as close as she
would lie, and the wind rose.
The wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her to it. She had no more
sail than she needed; she heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind;
she took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a motion of mastery.
It was like the gesture of a horse when he bends his head back to his
chest, arching his neck with pride as he springs upon our Downs at
morning. So set had the surging of the sea become that she rose and fell
to it with rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, and the
regular splash of the rising bows and the little wisps of foam came in
ceaseless exactitude like the marching of men, and in all this one mixed
with the life of the sea.
But before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten nothing) the wind got
stronger still, and I was anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to
windward, seeing the white caps beginning on the tops of the seas,
although the wind and tide were together. She heeled also much more, and
my anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had strengthened by
about half-past eight, so that it was very strong indeed, and she was
plainly over-canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all the
cordage humming; there it stood, and by the grace and mercy of God the
wind increased no more, for its caprice might have been very different.
Then began that excellent game which it is so hard to play, but so good
to remember, and in which all men, whether they admit it or not, are
full of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilaration that one would
think the personal spirit of the sea was mingled with the noise of the
air.
For a whole great hour she roared and lifted through it still, taking
the larger seas grandly, with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and
still over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea went by rejoicing
and pouring, and the sheets and the weather runner trembled with the
vigour of the charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of the seas
ahead (for each and individually they struck my soul as they came, even
more strongly than they struck the bows--steep, curling, unintermittent,
rank upon rank upon rank, as innumerable cavalry); still watching them,
I say, I groped round with my hand behind the cabin door and pulled out
brandy and bread, and drank brandy and ate bread, still watching the
seas. And, as men are proud of their companions in danger, so I was
proud to see the admirable lift and swing of that good boat, and to note
how, if she slowed for a moment under the pounding, she recovered with
a stride, rejoicing; and as for my fears, which were now fixed and
considerable, I found this argument against them: that, though I could
see nothing round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under the lee of
the Goodwins, for, though I could not exactly calculate my speed, and
though in the haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that I was
roaring very quickly towards the further shore.
When, later, the sea grew confused and full of swirls and boiling, I
said to myself: "This must be the tail of the Goodwins." But it was,
not. For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the great spring tide had
carried me right away down Channel, and there was not twelve feet of
water under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I noticed came
from the Varne--the Varne, that curious, long, steep hill, with its twin
ridge close by, the Colbert; they stand right up in the Channel between
France and England; they very nearly lift their heads above the waves. I
passed over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep beyond, and
still the ship raced on. Then, somewhat suddenly, so suddenly that I
gave a cry, I saw right up above me, through what was now a thick haze,
the cliffs of England, perhaps two miles away, and showing very faintly
indeed, a bare outline upon the white weather. A thought ran into my
mind with violence, how, one behind the other, beyond known things,
beyond history, the men from whom I came had greeted this sight after
winds like these and danger and the crossing of the narrow seas. I
looked at my watch; it was ten o'clock, so that this crossing had taken
three hours, and to see the land again like that was better than any
harbour, and I knew that all those hours my mind had been at strain. I
looked again at the vague cliffs narrowly, thinking them the South
Foreland, but as they cleared I saw to my astonishment that I had blown
all down the Straits, and that Folkestone and the last walls of the
chalk were before me.'
The wind dropped; the sea went on uneasily, tumbling and rolling, but
within a very little while--before eleven, I think--there was no breeze
at all; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour not a mile away, but
never any chance of getting there; and I whistled, but no wind came. I
sat idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, towards one, a
little draught of air blew slantwise from the land, and under it I crept
to the smooth water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and here I
let the anchor go, and settling everything, I slept.
It is pleasant to remember these things.